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Flight delays and finger-pointing follow furloughs

Wary travelers braced for more furlough-related delays today, the second weekday for which they're in place. There are mostly clear skies now, but - as they did on Monday - problems could pop up as flight

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Travelers faced another day of furlough-related flight delays, as the political finger-pointing over automatic federal spending cuts in Washington intensified.

FlightAware.com, which tracks flight delays and cancellations, counted 4,749 delays of U.S. flights and 273 cancellations by 5 p.m. Tuesday. For comparison, there were 6,670 delays and 333 cancellations for all Monday, according to FlightAware.

At mid-afternoon Tuesday, Los Angeles had delays up to 45 minutes, with planes held at their gates or while taxiing, for the airport's third day of problems with furloughed air-traffic controllers, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Arrivals into Dallas-Ft Worth were delayed a half-hour and climbing because of furloughs, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association

And planes in the Washington area were being held on the ground at Dulles and had ground delays at Ronald Reagan National airport because of staffing, according to the controllers' union. Planes headed to National were being delayed an average of an hour and 13 minutes because of staffing, according to the FAA.

At the same time, criticism of the furloughs intensified from congressional Republicans, while Obama administration officials said Congress must fix the problem through negotiations over spending.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., led the attack by accusing the administration of trying to score political points on the backs of weary travelers stuck on tarmacs. He said the FAA should have planned better for spending cuts and avoided furloughs.

"That means prioritizing funding to ensure that flights are not needlessly delayed or canceled," McConnell said. "There is no good reason for these delays."

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, who has fought FAA's effort to close 149 towers at smaller airports, said "something is clearly wrong at FAA." And Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the top Republican on the transportation committee, said the crisis over flight delays "smells of politics."

But Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he warned of furloughs at a White House news conference Feb. 22, and that Congress has not acted. The FAA had to cut $637 million because of a spending impasse between Congress and the administration, and LaHood said there was no way to avoid furloughs.

"We're getting a lot of inquiries from Congress and people are trying to figure out how to fix this," LaHood said. "As is the case with Congress, they wait until the 11th hour. It's time for them to fix this."

Michael Huerta, the head of the FAA, said the agency has few options. Furloughs reduce spending $200 million, leaving another $437 million to cut from contracts such as closing towers at 149 small airports and reducing training and information technology, he said.

"We've used all the flexibility we have," Huerta said. "Congress needs to come together and resolve the whole sequester issue."

The lingering dispute left delays and cancellations continuing to mount. According to FlightStats, which tracks delays and cancellations, there were 50 cancellations and 124 delays as of Tuesday morning.

The FAA attributed 1,200 of Monday's delays to staffing reductions from the furloughs, with another 1,400 delays were caused by weather and other factors.

Hardest hit during the first three days of furloughs been the New York-area airports, which operate in the most crowded airspace in the country. At 3:30 p.m., wind was delaying flights into Newark by an average of two hours and 19 minutes, into LaGuardia nearly two hours and into JFK an hour and 18 minutes, according to the FAA.

"Yesterday and Sunday, the impacts that we saw were primarily in the Northeast -- that didn't surprise us," Huerta said. "We'll continue to monitor it pretty carefully as we go through this week."

The FAA said on Tuesday afternoon that travelers "can expect to see a wide range of delays that will change throughout the day depending on staffing and weather related issues."

In addition to New York, the FAA was seeing problems at airports in Los Angeles, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Las Vegas, and Washington, D.C..

"Controllers will space planes farther apart so they can manage traffic with current staff, which will lead to delays at airports including DFW, Las Vegas and LAX," the FAA said in a statement. "The FAA also expects delays at Newark and LaGuardia because of weather and winds. The FAA will continue to work with the airlines throughout the day to try and minimize delays for travelers."

An American Airlines plane takes off at Los Angeles International airport Monday, where some fliers were met with delays due to staffing cuts for air traffic controllers because of government spending reductions.(Photo: Damian Dovarganes AP)

The delays are increasing the political finger-pointing over automatic federal spending cuts in Washington, where the airline industry and pilots also are suing to stop the furlough of air-traffic controllers.

Senate Committee on Science, Commerce and Transportation Chairman John Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member John Thune, R-SD, sent a letter to LaHood and Huerta yesterday saying that the furloughs and plan to close air traffic control towers "raises serious safety and operational issues."

"We are now faced with substantial possible disruption to the air transportation system," they wrote.

The airline industry trade group, Airlines for America, the union Air Line Pilots Association and the Regional Airline Association asked a federal court Friday to stop the furloughs. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit hasn't scheduled a hearing, and the next documents in the case aren't due until May 22.

Paul Hudson, president of the consumer-advocacy group FlyersRights.org, said politicians are using flight delays to pressure their opponents into a compromise over federal spending.

"Regardless of that, passengers shouldn't be held hostage to these political disputes," he said.

If furloughs continue, Hudson urged the FAA to shift controllers to important hubs where traffic is heaviest, such as New York and Chicago, rather than spreading the furloughs evenly across the country. He said three-hour delays that have been threatened in places would be catastrophic.

"If you choke up those points, you hurt the whole national system," Hudson said. "Of course, we haven't seen that yet, and no one knows for sure whether the estimates are exaggerated or not."

The U.S. Department of Transportation is now reviewing a motion filed by two airline industry associations, Airlines for America and the Regional Airline Association, requesting a moratorium of the tarmac delay rule that requires airlines to let passengers off an aircraft if it has been delayed on the tarmac for at least three hours on domestic flights and four hours on international flights.

The groups say the furloughs will make it difficult for airlines to abide by that rule.

Airports throughout the country said they could not yet determine how the furloughs were affecting them.

Miami International Airport had delays on Monday afternoon due to weather. This morning, 11 arriving flights and four departures were delayed. "Nothing unusual there," said airport spokesman Greg Chin.

He said he could not tell what kind of impact the furloughs were having because "so much depends on conditions at other airports."

Delta said that its mainline flights have been mostly unaffected, but on Monday there were cancellations of roughly 90 regional, connecting flights in the northeast.

"We've experienced delays, particularly in the Northeast'' ranging from 60 to 90 minutes, Steve Gorman, Delta's Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, said in a conference call. That knocked the airline's on-time arrival rate of roughly 86% down to roughly 78%, he said.

But most regional passengers were able to get rebooked on other flights, and airline officials said they expected to be able to stick to the full schedule for their mainline flights.

Still, said US Airways Chairman and CEO Doug Parker in a conference call to investors: "We can handle it for a little while but this can't continue.''

Regional routes, flown by smaller jets, will be particularly hard hit, he said in the call with investors. "It will have an impact on small communities . . There are other ways to cut these costs rather than harming the air travel system and the flying public.''

Allison Steinberg, a spokeswoman for JetBlue Airways, said the airline had delays on Monday "on a 'blue skies' day when we normally would not have seen any."

"Unfortunately, delays and cancellations due to FAA furloughs are occurring," she said. "Our focus remains on running as safe and efficient an operation for our customers as possible. We're working to minimize any inconvenience as a result of sequestration and recommend customers regularly check the status of their flights."